


I Can't Change Time

by Antosha



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hidden Relationship, Infidelity, Little Hangleton, Post-Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, References to David Bowie, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:48:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23781079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antosha/pseuds/Antosha
Summary: Harry and his friends are on a mission back in time — and find more than they bargained for. (Among the first fics I wrote, just afterOrder of the Phoenixcame out. Why not Neville? I don't know...)
Relationships: Harry Potter & Lily Evans Potter, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Kudos: 23





	1. A Ghost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry is on a mission back in time. While he's waiting for his mates to meet up with him, he runs into the one woman he would most love to talk to. But how can he ask anything or say anything without jeopardizing his own past, and the wizarding world's future? (Eesh! I've gotten better at writing summaries! Or at least less long-winded...)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Future (past?) character death. Temporal mechanics. No, not any incest, of course not, you sickos, but some Freudian headaches...

Harry had completed his mission with almost forty-five minutes to spare. The clump of Tom Riddle, Sr.'s hair lay folded in a silk handkerchief in his pocket, and a sickly feeling of relief spread through him. He'd gotten in and out of the Riddle house with absolutely no incident.  
  
Striding nonchalantly down the streets of Little Hangleton, he spotted the rendezvous spot: the village's lone teashop. He ducked inside and seated himself to wait for Ron and Hermione, Ginny and Luna to come back from their missions in other parts of the country.  
  
A cup of tepid, tasteless tea and a bright pink cake did nothing to dampen his exultant, relaxed mood. He took in the other patrons of the shop, amused by the hair and the fashions of this provincial village, three years before his own birth.  
  
Time travel was very disconcerting, but it certainly had entertainment value. A song was on the radio, an eerie voice singing about floating high above the world, in outer space. It pulled at some random string in Harry's memory.  
  
Behind him, the door chimes rang as someone entered the shop. Harry heard a high-pitched squeal. Suddenly his vision was obscured by a flash of copper, a liquid weight poured itself onto his lap and chest, and Harry found himself at the receiving end of a passionate, wet, toe-curling, soul-satisfying kiss.  
  
When the kiss was broken, Harry was stunned, but that was nothing to the astonishment that slammed into him when he was actually able to see the face of his attacker: pale, befreckled, with a mane of dark red hair and almond-shaped green eyes.  
  
He had just been treated to one of the most erotic moments of his seventeen years by Lily Evans, the woman who would one day be his mother. This was a Freudian nightmare. *****  
  
When Lily saw Harry's face, her own expression plummeted. She blushed and began to stammer. "I'm so sorry! I thought… I thought…" She stood and backed away from him.  
  
"You thought I was… James," said Harry, realization sinking in.  
  
She nodded and sat in the chair opposite him, but then her face closed off, turning white with fear. The other customers, who had all turned to look, slowly began to return to their weak tea and gossip. "Who are you?" she asked.  
  
Harry's breath caught. He wanted desperately to tell her the truth, to tell her who he was and who she was, and what was going to happen. But the lecture that Professors Snape, Flitwick and McGonagall had given them before their departure was still only an hour old in his head: under no circumstance could he reveal the future to anyone. Even the smallest change could destroy everything. Even something insignificant could change the future that was Harry's present until it was totally unrecognizable and--in all likelihood--worse. All he could manage to say was, "It's complicated."  
  
Lily's face seemed to be warring between shock and distrust. "Try me," she said.  
  
Harry sighed in frustration. How often had he dreamed of having the opportunity actually to talk to his parents? And here was his mother, yet the only answers he could give her were guaranteed to incite her disbelief. "I… I really can't tell you. Not because I don't want to, but because it would be really dangerous to us both if I did." He leaned forward. "But I'm from the… community, and my name is Harry."  
  
"It's about You-Know-Who, isn't it?" Lily asked, her eyes boring into Harry's.  
  
It was not too much, Harry decided, simply to nod.  
  
Apparently satisfied, she pursed her lips and sighed. "Well, Harry," she said, "it's a, um, pleasure meeting you." Then, remembering how she had introduced herself, she began to turn a dark shade of crimson. "I'm sorry," she said, stifling a nervous laugh, "but you…"  
  
"Look like James. I've been told." Silently, Harry kicked himself for giving her that information.  
  
She looked at him, clearly trying to weigh which questions were in-bounds. Instead she held out her hand. "My name is..."  
  
"Lily Evans. Pleased to meet you," muttered Harry, shaking her hand, and they settled into a silence that was neither unpleasant nor entirely comfortable.  
  
"You can let go of my hand now," Lily said, and now it was Harry's turn to blush, and she smiled.  
  
"So," he said, trying to think of a neutral topic when he was boiling with things he wanted to ask and say, "what brings you to Little Hangleton?"  
  
"Oh," she replied, "we're up for the summer. My mother's family are from around here."  
  
"Really?" Harry blurted, "I didn't know that!"  
  
Lily gave a mischievous grin, "Well, that's a relief. I was beginning to feel like you knew everything about me. Yeah, my great-grandparents lived in a big old house up the road--been abandoned for years, everyone says its haunted. But my Nana Riddle still lives in a cottage at the other end of town."  
  
The teacup hadn't reached Harry's mouth, or he would certainly have spit a mouthful across the table. "Riddle?"  
  
"Yeah, she actually married my Granda, Bill Hornley, but we always call her by her maiden name… Are you all right, Harry?"  
  
"Have you ever heard of Tom Riddle?" Harry asked, trying not to shout.  
  
She shrugged, eying him warily. "That was her brother's name. He was a stage magician. But he died, along with my great-grandparents, back during the war. They're the ones that're supposed to be haunting the place," she said with a smile. Then she looked at him thoughtfully. "At the school, you know, in one of the trophy cases, there's a dusty old medal made out to a Tom Riddle. But that couldn't have been him. It's too young. And besides, Nana was just as shocked and pleased as my parents when I got my letter from… from the school, you know."  
  
Harry nodded, and tried to still his breathing. Though he had never expected it, this was a connection that made perfect sense: Voldemort himself was Harry's last maternal relative, aside from his aunt. The implications were astonishing.  
  
She gazed at him, still thoughtful. "This is so odd," she said, "and not just because you look like James. I feel as if I've known you forever."  
  
Harry nodded. "I feel as if I've known you my whole life," he said, earnestly and truthfully. "I know so much about you, and James, and Sirius, and Moony…"  
  
She laughed, caught off-guard again. "And don't forget little Peter!" she said.  
  
"Yes," he said, trying to keep the anger and sadness from his voice, "little Peter." He could tell her everything. He could reveal Peter Pettigrew's betrayal. He could save her life and his father's and change his own history utterly. But if he did that… It was only through their death that Voldemort had been defeated, the first time--her death had put the protection on Harry that had caused Voldemort's near obliteration. And if that protection and the scar upon his forehead didn't exist, would he or anyone else stand any chance of defeating Lord Voldemort finally? Saving her life might doom tens of thousands. At long last, Harry had some inkling of the agony that Dumbledore had endured in keeping silent during his first five years at Hogwarts.  
  
He looked at the beautiful, vital girl across the table from him and his stomach began to churn. She was dead. In four and a half years, she would sacrifice herself to save her son, to save him, Harry. And she sat there, vibrating with life, with no idea. But then, he thought, we're all condemed. We just none of us know what door the reaper is hiding behind.  
  
For the second time, she looked across at him and asked, "Are you all right, Harry?"  
  
He looked around, dabbing his eyes with a napkin. "Can I get you a cup of tea?"  
  
She shook her head. "My sister and her fiancé are going to meet me here. He's taking us for a ride in his big, new American motor."  
  
"You don't look terribly excited," Harry said, smiling.  
  
"Well, in all honesty, there's almost nothing I'd less rather do. He's a bore, and he brings out the worst in my sister. I've been day-dreaming about James showing up and rescuing me," she grinned shyly, "which is why I tackled you when I saw the back of your head."  
  
"Lucky me," he said, more emphatically than he had intended, and they both blushed. "Listen, Lily," he began, but at just that moment the chimes rang again, and two newcomers entered the shop: a beefy young man with long sideburns and a walrus mustache, and a horsy woman with an air of absolute disappointment.  
  
"Oh, look!" Lily said. "It's my sister and her boyfriend." She stood, and Harry stood with her.  
  
"Hello, Lily," said the young, self-satisfied Vernon Dursley. "Ready to see my new car?"  
  
Petunia pierced Harry with a disapproving gaze--one that she had not yet perfected. "Who's this, Lily? A friend from your school?"  
  
"Yes," said, Harry, almost unable to restrain himself. "If I'd known you were up here for the summer, Lily, I'd have flown up much sooner."  
  
The two muggles went pale, giving Harry the satisfaction of knowing they had picked up on precisely what he had meant by flown. "When you're ready, Lily," Petunia said, her voice trembling, "we'll be outside in the Cadillac." And they left as quickly as propriety allowed.  
  
"Oh, you are wicked," Lily said, laughing. "I haven't seen Vernon get that red that quickly in ages."  
  
I've had years of practice, Harry thought, but he simply smiled. "Lily," he said, "it would be best if you didn't tell anyone you ran in to me," he said. "Especially no one at school--not even the teachers."  
  
She nodded, though it was unclear to Harry how deeply she understood--or, for that matter, trusted him. "It's been a very unique pleasure, Harry," she said, shaking his hand again.  
  
"Likewise," he said, fighting down the flood of emotion one more time.  
  
She leaned close to him, her eyes bright, and said, with quiet intensity, "Can I tell you what I think, Harry-of-the-black-hair-and-green-eyes?" When he didn't respond, she went on, "I think you're from the future. I think you can't tell me anything because if you do, it will change something really important. But if James… " She shivered slightly. "If James and I ever have a son, I'm going to make sure we call him Harry."  
  
Harry did not trust himself to move. Lily leaned forward and gave him a kiss--not fiery and melting this time, but shattering, a benediction of such sweetness that Harry knew he could not bear it.  
  
She began to pull away, but he held her hand tight. "Listen," Harry said, in a hissing whisper, "there's going to be a time when you're in a very… dangerous situation. James will run into the room and yell at you to get out. And you're going to try something really frightening and risky. I want you to know that what you're going to do works."  
  
Her eyes went round. She nodded briefly and let go of his hand. She gave a small half-wave, which he returned, and then she left the shop.  
  
Well, Harry thought, it was all I could do--to let her know in that moment of terror that she would succeed. I hope it gives her some relief.  
  
Twenty minutes later, Harry's friends arrived for the rendezvous, right on time. Harry got up to meet them.  
  
"Are you all right, Harry?" asked Ginny--the same question that Lily had asked, posed with the same gentle intensity. Ron and Hermione's faces mirrored Ginny's concern.  
  
"You look," said Luna, her eyes odd and knowing, "as if you've seen a ghost."  
  
"I have," Harry said, and walked outside into the sunlight.  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***** OK, so it DID involve a quasi-incestuous moment, but that wasn't the POINT of the story, no, no, no. It's all in your mind.


	2. A Conspiracy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ron and Hermione are on a time-traveling mission to the past, but they're mostly worried about how to come to grips with their future....

Ron and Hermione were bickering mutedly as they strode out of the center of Chipping Cleghorn, their mission complete. They should have been relieved--theirs was both the most tricky of the three quests that had precipitated this trip into the past, and the one that had set the dateline: twenty-two years back from their own seventh year at Hogwarts.  
  
Hermione carried in her bag a small vile of blood that she and Ron had drawn--with only slight fudging of the facts and a great show of cooperation--from Benjy Fenwick, who was due to die hours later at the hands of a band of Death Eaters.  
  
They had done all of this with great ease, being very careful not to break any of the restrictions laid down by Professors Snape, McGonagall and Flitwick. As Ron had pointed out, Hermione had lived with the paradoxes of time travel for over a year without managing to spark a global disaster, and they had kept the sick dread of Benjy's impending death from overwhelming them. They'd even surreptitiously administered the Pain-free Potion that Professor Snape had provided to make Fenwick's death less horrible.  
  
They weren't relieved however. They were arguing.  
  
"Ron, we've got to tell him," Hermione hissed. "I can't lie to him any more."  
  
"Hermione, c'mon. If we were going to come clean we should have done it years ago. Now would be… cruel."  
  
"Crueler than hiding the truth?"  
  
"With all that he's lost--that we've all lost, right?--in the last few years, do you think he could take us just walking up to him and saying…"  
  
Hermione gave an exasperated growl, and Ron closed his mouth. There was a point past which even he wasn't willing to push Hermione. They walked silently, their hands stuffed in their pockets.  
  
A boxy grey car zoomed by, windows rolled down, radio playing loudly. "We could be heroes…"  
  
After a few minutes, as they were reaching the edge of the village, Hermione slipped her hand into Ron's pocket and laced her fingers through his. "When we started all of this, the two of you weren't talking," she said, quietly. "It was that stupidity the two of you got into over the Tri-Wizard thing. I didn't feel like I could tell Harry--he'd have felt I was taking sides. And then you got all stupid over the Yule Ball and wouldn't ask me until you were sure Harry was going to ask someone else and I was so ticked off at you…"  
  
"You went with Krum. Don't remind me. You rubbed my nose in that long enough," Ron muttered.  
  
Hermione mouth twisted in a wicked smile that was the only clue to her very well hidden mischievous side. "Paid you back, didn't I?"  
  
Ron grunted.  
  
"Ron," Hermione said, "the thing is, he's going to find out eventually."  
  
"Don't you think I know that?" Ron grumbled. "I've been dreading telling him ever since about two seconds after the first time we kissed…"  
  
Hermione's eyebrow arched.  
  
"Well," Ron said, beginning to smile, "maybe more like twenty minutes after the first time we kissed." Then he scowled. "I love you, Hermione. But I love Harry, too--not the same way, mind, I don't want you to get any funny ideas in that twisted head of yours…"  
  
"Twisted head of mine?" Hermione yelped.  
  
"You’re the one who said you had… you know, fantasies about Fred and George?" Ron pulled a face, and Hermione gave a throaty laugh that reminded Ron just how far down the path from childhood they had walked together, he and Hermione. "But, 'Mione, you know what I mean: I love him. Next to you and my family, he's the person I care for most in the world. How can I turn to my best mate and just say, 'Oi, I know you haven't noticed, Harry, but your two best friends have been snogging in stairwells for the last three years.'"  
  
Hermione squeezed Ron's hand, still in his pocket. "You really think he doesn't suspect?"  
  
"I know it. He's been so caught up in the DA, and Sirius and Dumbledore's deaths, and everything that he knows he's got to do to defeat You-Know…"  
  
"Just say it, Ron."  
  
Ron blanched. "Easy for you to say: you didn't grow up watching people cast Aversion charms every time anyone said… Voldemort." Ron gave a shallow sigh and went on. "But Harry's barely looked at a girl since the disaster with Cho. I kept hoping that he and Ginny would finally hook up…"  
  
"Yes, you were very subtle about that, weren't you?" Hermione teased.  
  
"Oh, come on, you know they like each other. They're just… Well, she's been seeing Dean since fifth year, and Harry… He hasn't talked to me about a girl since then. You?" Ron gave her a hard stare.  
  
Hermione thought for a moment, then shook her head.  
  
"So there's only two possibilities, okay? 'Cause I'm pretty certain he doesn't like boys. Either he's so preoccupied that he can't even let himself think about girls." Ron let out a much deeper sigh. "Or the girl he's thinking about is you and he doesn't want to hurt my feelings."  
  
Hermione's face fell. "Oh, Ron! You don't think…"  
  
"Well," he said, looking at her very seriously, "it's possible, isn't it?"  
  
Hermione began to blush--not a bright red blush like a Weasley. Hers was blotchy and dark. "Ron, I… I never even thought he might…"  
  
Ron shrugged again. "So that's why I haven't wanted to say anything. 'Cause it might not just be that we lied to him, you know. He might feel really, really betrayed. And I don’t think I could do that to him just now."  
  
Hermione put her free hand up to her cheek and nodded. They walked on in silence, watched by a small herd of brown and white cows.  
  
"I think this is a safe place," Ron said, when they reached a clump of ancient oaks. "No one'll hear us Apparate from here."  
  
Hermione nodded, took her hand from Ron's pocket, reached up, and gave Ron a long, deep kiss. When they parted, she searched his face and asked, "Are we betraying him?"  
  
He shrugged.  
  
"I love you, Ronald Bilius Weasley," she said.  
  
"But you love him, too, Hermione Jane Granger." She began to blush again. Ron nodded. "Yeah, well, so do I. It's just less complicated for me. Look, once this thing with Volde… Voldemort is done, then we tell him, okay?"  
  
Hermione gave a quiet nod, and the two of them Disapparated with a loud pop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter that kept me from making this series of stories HBP- or DH-compliant. It would have had to be totally rewritten, and I couldn't come up with a plotline that pleased me anywhere near a much. :sigh:
> 
> The idea that Ron and Hermione spent all of GoF and OotP sneaking into dark corners still makes me laugh though...
> 
> I must say, the use of 'Mione as a nickname makes me cringe, however.


	3. A Rendez-Vous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ginny and Luna are on a mission to the past when they make an accidental discovery that changes... everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** Um... Shattered illusions.

Ginny and Luna's was the simplest of the three missions, if the most grizzly: go to St. Mungo's and quietly pick up the discarded foot of Silas Fink, a Death Eater whose leg had been partially amputated following a failed attack on Alistair Moody. That the trip was to St. Mungo's of twenty-two years in the past only added to the macabre atmosphere.  
  
Luna, of course, seemed hardly to notice. She gazed around, goggle-eyed as usual, at the Muggles streaming through the streets. "Look at that one," she said, airily, pointing at a man whose hair seemed to have been inflated with helium.  
  
"C'mon, Luna, it's not funny for 1976," Ginny giggled to her friend. The gaudy styles of the people they passed only made her feel more nervous and off-balance.  
  
"I didn't think it was funny. I was thinking I'd like to do my hair like that," replied Luna mistily, picking up her tangled blond hair by the ends to see what it would look like if teased and permed into gravity-defying submission. Then she got an even vaguer expression on her face. "Do you think Ron would like my hair like that?"  
  
Ginny sighed. "I don't know, Luna. I have no idea what Ron likes, to be honest." She looked around. "I wish they had let us Apparate closer to the hospital."  
  
"Professor Snape didn't want us to be heard," Luna said.  
  
"Yeah," sighed Ginny, "no one heard us pop in to that automobile-smashing place, that's for certain. I've never heard a noise like that since Fred and George both got Howlers from Mum at once."  
  
Luna gave her usual complacent smile, and then stopped dead in her tracks.  
  
"Luna, what?…"  
  
"It's my mother," Luna said, pointing.  
  
A tall, wispy blonde in a red dress was striding down the opposite side of the street, in what seemed to be a state of high excitement. Like Luna, she had hair that was a frizzy dirty blonde, and pale skin. The woman's eyes, however, didn't bulge out of her head--they were wide-set and quite pretty.  
  
Luna began to walk right across the street. Ginny had to grab her by the belt to keep her from being run over by a car. "What do you think you're doing?" she gasped.  
  
"I've got to talk to her," Luna said.  
  
"Didn't you hear Professor McGonagall?" Ginny hissed. "We're not to interact with anyone more than we absolutely have to. If we do, we could destroy everything…"  
  
"I want to see her," Luna said, an unfamiliar urgency in her voice. "She's going in the direction of the hospital," she pleaded.  
  
Ginny looked at her friend and took a deep breath. "You promise not to talk to her? Not to distract her?"  
  
"Yes!" moaned Luna, but she was straining to run after her mother, pulling at Ginny's grasp like a dog worrying at its lead.  
  
As they followed Mrs. Lovegood through the crowded streets, the tall blonde woman seemed to become increasingly agitated, moving her handbag from one side to the other, running her free hand through her hair--not exactly in nervousness, it seemed, but in anticipation.  
  
"Where's she going?" Ginny wondered as she stumbled on, her hand still looped in Luna's belt--just in case.  
  
"I don't know," answered Luna, who was bounding so as not to lose her mother in the press of the pedestrian crowd. "I wish all these people would get out of the way!" She let out an exasperated growl, and suddenly, miraculously, every one of the muggles who crowded the sidewalk stepped to one side or the other, clearing a path directly to Mrs. Lovegood. "Thank you," Luna said, and sped through the newly opened passageway.  
  
Ginny was about to speculate that Luna's mother was headed to St. Mungo's--they were only a block or two away from the wizarding hospital--when their quarry stopped in front of a small, undistinguished-looking hotel on the corner at the far end of the block. When she spun around, Luna and Ginny pressed themselves into a doorway.  
  
Luna's gasping breath was heavy and damp in Ginny's ear.  
  
"What the hell is she doing here?" Ginny asked.  
  
Luna shrugged. "I have no idea. This is--what?--five years before I was born. My dad and she were living in Ottery St. Catchpole already. She wasn't working at Ollivander's any more."  
  
Together, the girls peaked out of the doorway. Mrs. Lovegood was scanning the other side of the street, clearly waiting for someone.  
  
"Maybe she's meeting a school chum?" Ginny asked. "She doesn't look like she's been out of Hogwarts more than a few years."  
  
"She didn't have many pals at school," Luna said. "Everyone thought she was a little odd. She wasn't lucky like me."  
  
Ginny didn't know what to say to that, so she simply patted her friend on the shoulder, and looked out again. "She's very pretty."  
  
"She was the most beautiful woman in the world." Tears were beginning to spill from Luna's pale, protuberant eyes.  
  
Ginny mopped at the tears with her sleeve. "Shhh."  
  
"My dad always said she was." Luna was beginning to blubber.  
  
"I know, Luna. I know." How am I so lucky, to have such a healthy, loving, living family, Ginny thought. I'm so damned lucky. I need to tell Mum and Dad….  
  
The two friends hugged, and Luna's weeping slowly subsided.  
  
When they next peaked out, the blonde woman was waving down the cross street. "Oh," Ginny said, "here we are. I wonder who..."  
  
A tall, bespectacled, redheaded man strode across the street waving his hand over his head in way that Ginny found all too familiar.  
  
"Oh, damn."  
  
"Ginny," Luna said, "isn't that your dad?"  
  
Before Ginny could answer, her father and Luna's mother stepped into a passionate, desperate, hungry embrace.  
  
"Oh, damn."  
  
The couple down the street broke from their kiss, and walked into the dingy hotel hand in hand.  
  
Luna and Ginny sank to the ground, stunned and slack-jawed.  
  
Percy, Ginny thought. Percy's about six months old now. Charlie's almost three and Bill's just five. Oh, Daddy, how?...  
  
How long? How could? How did? And why, of course.  
  
Suddenly, inexplicably, Luna began to giggle.  
  
"What could possibly be funny?" snapped Ginny, at which Luna merely laughed more manically.  
  
"Your dad's the Minister of Magic," Luna snorted.  
  
"So?"  
  
"So he can make the Department of Mysteries give him a time-turner so he can come back here and tell them to CUT IT OUT!" By the last word, Luna was no longer laughing. She was shouting, furious and red-faced as Ginny knew herself to be. It was a Luna that Ginny had never seen. "How could she do that to him? He loves her."  
  
"Merlin's beard, Luna, I'm so sorry." Mr. Lovegood at his wife's funeral, hand trembling on Luna's shoulder; that had been Ginny's first real image of grief. (Harry and Professor Lupin after Sirius Black's death. Cedric Diggory's parents, over for tea.) He had looked more like a ghost than many of the specters she would later meet at Hogwarts.  
  
Luna collapsed onto her friend's shoulder, wailing unapologetically now. The muggles streaming by barely noticed the two teenagers huddled in the dirty London doorway. One skinny, androgynous blond scuffled by singing. "Time may change me, but I can't change time..."  
  
What do we do? Ginny thought. Do I tell Mum? Maybe she knows. Do I tell Dad I know? Do I tell Ron? Soon it was she who was crying into her friend's flaxen rat's-nest.  
  
"What do we do, Luna?" Ginny asked once the tears slowed enough for her to talk.  
  
The blonde girl stood. "Let's go get the be-damned foot," she said, and strode off towards St. Mungo's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original note: OK, so no, I don't have a thing about infidelity. It just makes good stories. There's an old acting truism: good marriages make bad theatre. This one happened because I was rereading OotP with my kids and realized how much Luna and Ginny have in common--Ottery St. Catchpole, loving families, etc. Though Luna's family is infinitely smaller than the Weasleys's.... It occured to me to muck around with the happy-family thing, just to see what would happen. Icky me.
> 
> Note to the 'Second Edition': I did get some flack for this one. But honestly? I'm still fairly pleased with it. It established what has become for me a pattern when writing Luna-the-Unflappable: put her into situations where she is utterly... flapped. This was my first extended bit with Luna, and I was still working at finding her voice, but I'm not at all displeased. ;-)
> 
> Also, if you're wondering what what Mr. Weasley and Mrs. Lovegood were up to, there's a wee clue in the epilogue. Shhhhhhh...


	4. A Farewell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Harry and his mates are about to return from their tumultuous trip, they meet the one person they never thought they would see again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder — I wrote this in 2004, a year before _Half-Blood Prince_ came out. Keep that in mind.
> 
> Warnings: :sniff:

"It isn't ghosts who haunt the living," Luna said, in response to nobody, as they trouped glumly along on the road toward Great Hangleton. "It's the other way round."

They had proceeded in silence for thirty seconds before Harry shook his head and said, "What?"

Luna proceeded as if there had been no interruption. "It's the pull of the living that keeps ghosts hanging around. We can't let them go."

"But," Harry said, "Nick said..."

Luna's focus, however, was elsewhere, as it so often was, and she didn't seem to be listening.

Ginny, however, seemed to be worrying at something. "It's memories that we hold on to. Memories of what we think really happened."

Ron glanced from Ginny on his one side to Luna on the other. Like Luna, and most unlike herself, Ginny was thoroughly not there. "I think this time travel thing has given us all the creeps," he said, catching Hermione's eye as she walked next to Harry.

"It will tend to do that," Hermione said. "It makes you realize how fragile the thread of coincidences is that leads from one event to another."

They all lapsed back into silence. Each of them was considering the apparent randomness of the events that had lead them to this moment, twenty-two years in their own past, and of the apparently random events that had changed their lives there.

After several more minutes of listening to blackbirds calling to each other, Harry muttered, "If it's so damned fragile, how the hell can there be such a thing as Divination?"

"Well," Hermione said, "that's why I stopped taking the class."

"Yes, fine, but that damned prophecy is part of why we're here. That damned prophecy has been part of everything the Order has done for the past eighteen years... or the next... or... Oh, never mind. But it's had everything to do with everything Voldemort's done ever since--to my parents, to me, what the LeStranges did to Neville's family. If it's all such rubbish, why are people dying over it?"

"I don't know," said Hermione. "Maybe true prophecy makes its own future, like a big whirlpool, pulling everything into it." She shook her head, displeased with the fuzziness of it all.

"Only bloke who ever seemed to be able to make any sense out of all that garbage was Dumbledore," Ron said. "He always seemed to be able to sort it all out. Wish he weren't dead."

They all flinched. Dumbledore's death the previous school year was a nightmare from which the whole student body was still trying to wake.

"Well," Hermione said, "he isn't dead here. Not that that's any consolation."

Ginny sighed, "I dunno. There're a couple of things I’d like to ask him..."

Ron grunted, "Yeah. I imagine we've all got a few. You, Harry?"

Harry managed a weak laugh. "Of course, we wouldn't know where to track him. Did he stay at Hogwarts during the summer? I always wondered. He could be anywhere."

"As a matter of fact, Harry," said a familiar voice, "I am right here."

It would have been comic had it happened to someone else. The five jumped as one, like startled cats, and it didn't seem funny to them at all.

In the shade of an ancient oak stood the tall figure of Albus Dumbledore. He was dressed, disconcertingly, in a white jogger into the jacket of which he had tucked both his beard and hair. A pair of round, large sunglasses shaded his eyes.

"Professor." Harry, like the rest, stared open-mouthed at his late headmaster. One ghost in a morning seemed like plenty.

"You must be from the future as well," Hermione mused softly, "or you wouldn't know Harry."

"Well reasoned, Miss Granger," said Dumbledore, smiling beatifically, his large sunglasses reflecting the glare of the neighboring field. "Yes, I'm from the future. Though, judging by your conversation, not quite as far as your future."

Hermione stuttered and began to look around. Her eyes were glistening. Ron quietly touched her elbow.

Dumbledore sighed gently. "It is all right, Miss Granger. Given the way that things have been progressing, I have assumed that I would die around, what? The end of your sixth year?"

Harry, Ron and Hermione nodded mutely. Ginny was sniffling. Luna was simply looking at Dumbledore with an expression of vague perplexion.

"Yes," the old wizard said, suddenly looking his hundred and fifty years, in spite of the shiny trainers, the warm-up jacket and the sunglasses. He drew himself up to his considerable height. "Yes. Well, I know you're not supposed to tell me anything, but let me know this: you did finally get rid of Dolores Umbridge, didn't you?"

The students all nodded, almost in spite of themselves.

"Excellent," said Dumbledore, clapping his hands together. "I cannot say that I can find it in my heart truly to dislike very many people, but I regret to say that Dolores was one of them. She left thoroughly disgraced?" He held up his hand. "Don't tell me what happened to make her leave, just the manner of her leaving."

Again the students nodded. "She tried to sneak out, but Peeves chased her down to Hogsmeade with Professor McGonagall's walking stick," Ginny said. "Most of the school was watching and cheering."

"Ah!" said the late headmaster. "Wonderful! I knew keeping Peeves around would pay off eventually."

The five students smiled wanly.

"So, there were questions that wanted asking. Any of you?" Dumbledore's massive eyebrows arched eloquently.

Ginny started to say something, but then shook her head and looked at her shoes. Ron and Hermione followed suit.

"Miss Lovegood?" Dumbledore asked.

"Oh, not you, Professor, no. Someone else," said Luna. Ginny looked up and grunted, her eyes tearing up again.

"I see," Dumbledore said. "Time travel is... educational, but it does raise some questions, does it not?"

Luna and Ginny both nodded.

Dumbledore crossed his arms behind his back. "And you Harry? Any questions?"

Harry looked up at the clouds that were scattered across the blue summer sky. "I'm not sure, sir…"

"Did you ever discover why you were dreaming about that corridor?"

"Oh, yes, sir. We all did. The five of us and Neville. I dragged them all in to the Department of Mysteries, but they, and Neville too, they helped…" He was about to tell Dumbledore about the battle, but he realized that would give him information that could change his behavior in ways that might in fact be dangerous.

Dumbledore nodded, apparently considering just the same consequences. "Did I ever tell you about what was behind that door?"

Harry nodded too, relieved--here was a subject he could discuss without revealing anything, he was sure. "Yes, Professor, you told me about the prophecy."

"Did I? I'm so glad. I hoped that I would." Dumbledore did in fact look deeply relieved. "Any other questions that I might be able to answer?"

Harry frowned, his scar twisting beneath the unruly black mop of hair that he had attempted to blow dry for this trip back to the seventies. Was there anything that this Then he looked up into Dumbledore's blue eyes. "Just this, Professor. I..." Harry looked around at his friends. They all looked as though they had been as shaken by their visit to 1976 as he had. Nonetheless, he wasn't sure he was ready to talk with them about meeting his mother, about what he had told her. "I met someone here and it got me thinking. Doesn't the simple fact of our coming back here at all change the future--I mean, the present?"

Dumbledore took off his sunglasses, revealing the pale, pale blue eyes that had never failed to transfix and to disquiet Harry. "Have you ever wondered," he said mildly, "why your name is Harry?"

"What?" Harry said with a start, wondering if Dumbledore might not truly be so gifted a Legilemens that he didn't need to cast a spell.

"Well, why not Harold, or Henry, or Hal? Or Albus, for that matter--perfectly good name, Albus." Dumbledore stared down at the bemused faces of his former students. "The past, present and future are all tied together in ways that are both infinitely fragile and infinitely complex. It is true that the movement of a butterfly's wing in China can alter the path of a hurricane in the Atlantic. But it is also true that destiny is very capable of tending to itself."

"'Time present and time past are all present in time future….'" Hermione whispered.

Dumbledore laughed as he put his sunglasses back on. "Well done again, Miss Granger! Yes, Mr. Eliot and I had some very interesting discussions about that when I was still an Auror." Dumbledore smiled and began to pat his pockets. "An absolute Muggle, but with any talent at all, he would have made a great wizard."

Ginny began to weep. When had Harry ever heard her cry before? The Chamber of Secrets, perhaps? No, not even then. Suddenly the weight of it all began to squeeze his insides until he found that he, too, was loosing a flood of tears.

"Well," said Dumbledore, "I must be going. I have some people I've been meaning to see." He began to walk down the road toward Little Hangleton. He waved to them. "Goodbye, Harry. Hermione. Ron. Luna. Ginny."

"Goodbye, Professor," they all muttered thickly.

He stopped and turned around. "Oh, Harry!" he called back.

"Yes, Professor?" Harry said through his tears.

"You're taking good care of Fawkes, aren't you?"

"Yes, Professor," Harry was barely able to choke out.

"Good. I knew you would." Dumbledore strode away, an old man in a shiny white running suit. They could barely here him singing, "Let's dance! Put on your red shoes, and dance the blues...."

As his voice faded, Hermione buried her face in Ron's chest and began to sob. Ron kissed the top of her head; tears dripped down from his long nose onto her hair.

How long before they tell me? Harry wondered. Should I tell them I know? There's so little joy in the world--they shouldn't have to hide it, he thought, even as the jealousy and envy of being the one not chosen nibbled at him. But then he realized they would tell him when they could. And, he guessed, that would probably be sometime soon.

He looked over to Ginny and Luna. Ginny was looking directly at him, though her eyes were unreadably dark. Luna was staring at something over his shoulder. Their hands were locked together. It was a different kind of intimacy from Ron and Hermione's, but an intimacy nonetheless.

Harry put one arm around both girls. Together, they embraced him. Ginny's hands wrapped themselves in Harry's shirt as she pulled him towards her. Harry could feel Luna vibrating under all of the stillness. From behind, Harry felt two more sets of arms snake themselves around him.

They all stood there for a while, feeling distinctly un-English.

"Come on," Harry said. "Let's go home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See. I told you Dumbledore would die at the end of the sixth book. :-)
> 
> This is the bit that made me think, Aw, come on, I could make this work with HBP, couldn't I? Ah, well....
> 
> And it's sort of funny, given my later fascination with the Harry/Ginny/Luna threesome, to see me writing that three-way Nargle-hug a full year before I wrote Camera Obscura. It wasn't intended THAT way. Really.


	5. Epilogue: A Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lily sings Harry to sleep, safe from the lurking danger outside.

Lily sat in the rocking chair with Harry, semi-delirious, singing any song that came into her head. "Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, you know Major Tom's a junky..."

Downstairs, James was fiddling away at something. Probably waxing his damned broom. Cooped up as they were, he hadn't been able to go flying for months, but he still maintained it as if he were playing in the World Cup.

A nightingale outside sang gorgeous, soporific counterpoint to Lily's glam-rock lullaby.

"Mo," Harry muttered, reaching up for her mouth, fighting off sleep as if his life depended on it. Another song. I'm so happy, Lily thought, I could kill myself.

How lucky, she had joked with Alice Longbottom before they had withdrawn to their separate hiding places. How lucky we are, you and Frank and me and James, to get to spend weeks doing nothing but loving our children. Not like poor Molly Weasley, who had just had her seventh--seventh!--and was still spending much of her time handling logistics for the Order.

A girl, said the letter from Molly that Peter had brought. A beautiful girl, at last. Ginevra, which Lily thought was a beautiful name, even by wizard standards, and Lily loved all of the peculiar, obscure wizarding names. Aberforth. Andromeda. She even loved the name Bellatrix, though she didn't like the bearer of that name much, no, not at all.

Luna. The Lovegoods, too, had had a girl, so Molly had said. With Arthur's help, whatever that meant.

Lily broke off from singing Blondie's "Heart of Glass" and pinched Harry's nose. He giggled. "So there's one for you and one for your good buddy Neville."

"Mo," said Harry.

"What?" laughed Lily weakly. "Two girls isn't enough? You boys..."

"Mo."

"All right." She began to reach back to her pre-Hogwarts days for songs on the records she had listened to with Petunia: "You've Got a Friend," "Downtown," "The Boxer." If he didn't fall asleep soon, she would. James had managed the night before in no time at all. He had better not have been casting any charms.

Peter had been so odd tonight. More ratty than ever, and none of the soulful clucking that he usually bestowed on Harry. He'd seemed almost frightened.

Which stood to reason, it occurred to Lily. He was their Secret Keeper, but there was no protection for him. As soon as he stepped outside onto the Godric's Hollow high street, he was vulnerable to attack.

Poor Peter. They shouldn't have let Sirius talk them into using him. Even if there was a spy. Peter was being worn to a nub by the pressure.

Harry had finally stopped wiggling. His eyes were still pulsing open, but his breathing had started to fade into the long, blessed, deep rhythms that promised sleep for both of them.

Are you Harry-of-the-green-eyes-and-black-hair? Lily wondered. She hadn't told anyone about that strange encounter five summers back, when she thought she saw James in the tea shop and it turned out to be this very intense boy who looked just like her boyfriend, except for her own brilliant green eyes and a serpentine scar on his forehead. It was the one secret she had kept from her husband. But she had been so certain that this boy, Harry, had visited from the future, that she had convinced James that they should name their own son Harry.

"You've got the green eyes, beautiful boy, but no scar," she whispered as she transferred Harry's slack body into his crib.

Almost without thinking, she performed a charm that Dumbledore had taught her, one that would protect Harry against even the deadliest of curses, if the circumstances were just right. Prey they never are, she thought, as she tapped Harry for the third and final time just over his right eyebrow, renewing and strengthening the charm as she did daily.

Spells, she thought. The silly spells we weave around each other, and none stronger than the spell you cast on me the moment I saw those green eyes.

She stepped toward the doorway to go down to James when her husband walked into the room, grinning. He gave her a thumbs-down gesture and raised his eyebrows. Down yet?

She nodded. She was about to tell him it was time to put his energy to better use than polishing his broom, when she realized just how silent it was downstairs. No nightingale.

An explosion rocked the house. The wide oak floorboards, already bowed with age, rippled as the wards that protected the front door were tested. They held, but barely.

Peter, Lily thought, as she stood frozen by the crib. Peter, you poor sod, you sold us out.

"DIFFINDO!" screamed a high, cold voice outside and the house rocked again.

Voldemort.

Concealment? No, he could see through James's cloak, she was sure. Floo? No, the hearth was downstairs, damn it. She and James could Apparate, but they would have to leave Harry behind... That left... No. She couldn't...

"Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off --" As James ran down the stairs, a third explosion burst the front door wide open.

A shiver ran through Lily. The boy with the scar had grasped her hand, his eyes feverish, and said, "There's going to be a time when you're in a very... dangerous situation. James will yell at you to get out. And you're going to try something really frightening and risky. I want you to know that what you're going to do works."

She looked down at her son, who was sitting up in his crib. Unable to master her voice, she mouthed, "Thank you, Harry." With a flick, she activated the protective charm.

There was a green flash from the stairwell, and a cackle of high-pitched laughter.

Certain, now, Lily stepped forward, blocking Harry's crib from the direct line of sight of the door.

Wand in hand, she waited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... This is probably my second favorite in the series. It still works quite well, I think.
> 
> And anyone who has ever put a child to sleep knows what Lily meant when she thought, "I'm so happy, I could kill myself." ;-)


End file.
